FLORENTIN SMARANDACHE: PRIN TUNELE DE CUVINTE. POEME ÎNTR-UN VERS / THROUGH TUNNELS OF WORDS. ONE LINE POEMS. Traducere în limba engleză de Florentin Smarandache. Cu o prefaţă de Ovidiu Ghidirmic. Grafica de Victor Moraru. Bucureşti: Haiku, 1997; 74 p. ISBN 973-97876-2-2
Ovidiu Ghidirmic
Preface to Through tunnels of words
Preface Started with the haiku volume Oopotul
tăcerii
(The
BeII of Silence), the dassicisation process of paradoxism is continued in the present volume, 1hrough tunnels ofwords containing one line poems, that intends to reply to an older cyde, so ostentatiously advertized as Poems with
IlO
Unes.
In the work of Aorentin Smarandache we witness a dialectic of negation and intemal polemic. The title of the volume immediately captures attention. 1hrough tunnels of words, a metaphore of the last
poem
of the volume,
wants
to
suggest the
unidirectional going of the poetica! speech through the tunnels of the words of the one single poem. The idea of writing one-Iine poems, may have come to Aorentin Smarandache from Ion Pillat, one of the great Romanian poets in the inter-war period, who wrote a volume actually entitled One Une Poems in t 936. Ion Pillat was one of the remarkable reprezentatives of Romanian traditionalism, a fine and cultivated spirit, of great artistic refinement, a world-range poet. Ion Pillat even provided a sui generis definition of the one-Iine poem: A single Pan-
flute, but how many echoes in the words. Yet, Florentin Smarandache detaches himself from his prestigious model, both in conception and in poetic technique. The need for programatic delimitation is demanding, essential with Aorentin Smarandache, who is a "reverse",
"ă
rebours"
spirit, only able to manifest itself through negation, opposition, both to others and himself, as we have seen. In Ion Pillat time,
the one-Iine poem
was
considered an "innovatlon", the more interesting when it appeared in a traditional school poet. Today we have a
whole tradition of one-Iine poetry, including Florentin Smarandache, the "paradoxfst". Ion Pillat's
one-Iine
poems, as aii the poems of the celebrated author of the volume Pe
Argeş
În sus (Upstream on the
memorable date in Romanian
Argeş,
1923) - a
Literary History -
is
remarkable by the impeccable writing of the verse. This is because Ion Pillat was a thorough "caIophiIe", an adept of "beautiful writing", while Florentin Smarandache has an obvious "antlcalophillc" structure, and is disinclined to pay too much attention to form. Ion Pillat was an "apollInlc" temperament: calm, detached, tranquil and balanced, while his modem counterpart, on the contral)', has a "dyonlsiac" temperament: troubled, eager, anxious, of vitalist frenzy. In their admirable "writlng" Ion Pillat's oneline poems do not
count on "paradox", which is the
centerpoint of Florentin
Smarandache's outlook and
output. In
our
opmlon,
the
one-Iine
poem
is
the
touchstone any real poet, as it relies on synthesis - the major quality of the human spirit - and demand the art of extreme concision, of expressing the most in the fewest words: "Multum In parvo" - as the Latin said. The ultimate templation in poetry is that of including the very essence of the world, of the whole universe, in a single line - a performance only achieved only rarely by poets such as Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe or Eminescu. A single line may make a poet immortal and his work last throughout ages. To give just one exemple at hand, Eminescu, the greatest Romanian poet, he would have been one of the greatest poets of aii times even if he had written only the line "For the
lire
of the whoIe world ls but a dream of
etemaI death proletar
ff ,
the concluding line of the poem lmpărat Ĺ&#x;i
(Emperor
and
Proletarian).
We
have
to
acknowledge that never in world Iiterature has such a line been
produced
elsewhere.
Almost
romanticists said that "llfe Is a dream
ff,
ali
the
great
but that the Iife of
the whole world he but a dream of death, is a thing only Eminescu said. Looking on the whole Iife of the world from such a staggering perspective of the void, leaves one speechless, reduces one to ... silence. One's mind is pierced by such logic of the absolute! One-Iine poem should strive to become concise and
revealing apophtegmatic definitions, of gnomic
sententiousness, attained by c1assical aphorisms. This is why the art of one-Iine poems is so difficult. No matter how modem in form, one line poems belong to an art that is essentially c1assical! F10rentin Smarandache's one-Iine poems, induded in the volume Through tunnels of V\IOrds, contain almost nothing of the
paradoxical "Innovatlons" , with the ff exception of the "paradox as such, which not even ff innovation. They are nether "nona ... ffparadoxical ff llterature , nor "non-poemsff, nor "grapho-poems" , nor "plcto-poemsff, but poems proper. A poet once waging ceasless battle against the main Iiterary tool is now relatively cozily installed in the "writIng", as he tells us in the beginning, with a some resignation: "1 am IMng In one slngle V\IOrd: wrlting".
No wonder!
Only once do
irrepressible "paradoxlst" longings occur, when, through repetition, he comes to cut one word, indeed, the most troubling of alI: Quietness, as in the line "The dogs are
barldng at the stIIIness, the stiIIness Is stlII" (At the
sheepfoJd) , which signifies a paradoxical lengthening of echoes ... of Quietness. These one-Iine poems of F10rentin Smarandache's are not easy to group because of their thematic diversity and tehchnique. We leave the pleasure of dassification to the Romanian or American reader and any reader the world over. We only attempt a very brief guideline. A first category deal with the nostalgia of the native land and Romanian culture. for those who have even a summary knowledge of Romanian culture, the popular ballad
Mioriţa
is a starting point. Starting from it, Lucian Blaga, one of the gratest Romanian poets and philosophers, established the "sţyJistic matrlx" of Romanian spirituality in his essay, "Spaţiul
mioritic"
(The
Mioritic
t 936). The
Space,
Romanians were bom in a "mioritic space", a pastorale space, that acts for them as a "matrlx" , moulding their sensivity. The "Mioriţa" ballad contains a specifically Romanian philosophical outlook, a "mioritic" outlook on death, a Romanian "Weltanschaung". The Romanians, the ballad implies, saw Iife as a cosmic wedding, a Iithurgical ritual involving the whole nature. The Romanians' moral force, that of a people at the cross-reads, in the way of aii historical winds of change, is that of tuming any tragic into a happy event. It is a unique, original vision of Iife. The "Mioriţa"
does
is a bind of religion for the Romanians. So deeply
florentin
Smarandache
believe
in
Romanian
spirituaIity that he gets to the pre-eminence of artistic creation that itself generates reality: 1he shepherds are
comlnd down to the plaln dlrectIy from the baIJad (Ewe) , The flight of the BIrei In the Egg is the memorable title of another one-Iine poem, a title worthy of the father of
modem scillpture,
Brâncuşi,
who captured not only the
flight, but ... the potential flight. This is the very title conceived in the best paradoxical tradition! The key-words ofthe Romanian spirituaIity are "doina"
şi
"dor". "Doina" is
a specific Romanian tune expressing the "dor", a complex feeIing, that has no equivalent in other spirituaIity and which. the same Lucian Blaga defined as "the melancholy
of a soul, neIther too heavy, nor too Ught, ascendlng anei descendIng". The word does not translate. A RomanianAmerican writer, F10rentin Smarandache is reached by the "dor" even in Phoenix: "An upslde down predplce mountaln of longing" (A thought from Phoenlx, USA). The Latin essence of the Romanian people, the Getian-Dacian vestiges of Sarmisegetuza, the village of native
Oltenia,
Eminescu
and
BăIceşti,
Bacovia,
as
in his
cultural
landmarks, are ali themes for meditation for F10rentin Smarandache. The influence of Bacovia, another great Romanian poet. the best representative of Romanian "symboUsm", is visible in there one-line poems. Moreover, F10rentin Smarandache was characterised by Romanian criticism as a "BacovIan" poet, ever since his debut volume. "fonnulas
for the Spirit". Many of these one-line poems are modelled on the pictorial Bacovian technique, of synestesy and correspondence, chromatic pastels, indeed: îhe thunder threatens the whlte earth wlth a raln of lead" (Bacovian 1 ); "The ageing Iane blossoms under the grizzled ralns" (Bacovian B). But even greater in this volume is the influence of Lucian Blaga' s "expresslonJsm". " Expresslonlsm " means establishing relationship with the cosmic, the absolute, the e&
15 e&
unlimited, and is characterised by a violent imageism, by shoking metaphors. 'The stars are seethed in the blue bloocl of the sky" (Cosmic "The lIght ls ralslng its laps
m;
to the girdle" (Birth). "Do not lean out of your time" (E pericoloso sporgersi). Finally, we believe that the force-Iine of this voi urne consists of a metaphisical Iyridsm that places Florentin Smarandache in the contemporary trend of philosophical "pessimisrn" and "exlstentlalisrn". Concepts Iike "anxie1y", "concern", "fear", spedfic to contemporary existential philosophy are widely iIlustrated in this volume: "An octopus of horror was nestllng into my soul" (Commlnatio); ĂŽhe mirror of my face is scratched by the anxiety" (Self Portret); "Brimful with exceptatlons In the white Bour of loneliness" (Patience); "00 the blackboard of the despalr 1 am writing a new iIIusion" ($chool); "1 lIve alone in the coffin of my body" (Address). Most of the one-line poems of the volume Through tunnels of words are, indeed, memorable. "} beseech you, do not give birth to me agaln" (Mother) here is an aphorism that not even the bleakest of the world philosophers, Schopenhauer, would have dared utter! Florentin Smarandache is also a great poet, that should not be seen merely from the perspective of theory, but this side and beyond "paradoxism".
OVIDIU GHIDIRMIC